Addendum - Newsletter chairs.ws n.10 November 2009

DESIGNING PATH OF A MASTERPIECE
by Marc Sadler


Design is not a static model indeed, it alternates brilliant and bright periods to darker and dimmer moments like the current one, walking arm in arm with the deep crisis afflicting all fields, after a sort of general, widespread and uncontainable design drunkenness infected everyone.

On my side, I try to take new energy from this situation to reinvent my role, risking my profession and my experience: I observe the new consumer and I proudly notice that he evolved and developed a critical awareness privileging the product content against the auto-celebrating items, often labeled as beautiful thanks to their famous designer's signature or their posh brand.

Apart from the moment, my point of view hasn't changed much in the years: my main goal has always been to create beautiful objects with a technical and aesthetical content, recognizable throughout time.



I am firmly convinced that the good design makes the company and not the contrary, and good design has always been the merging between industry and designer's characteristics.It is not by chance that when I graduated in long gone 1968 at the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs the design was still called Industrial aesthetics.



Research and testing on materials have always been topical in my design process and consequently in my professional path, nevertheless  my inspirational sources are innumerable: first of all the Nature, flora and fauna are altogether masterpieces of design, just as the mineral kingdom but also history and all the solution that mankind invented and developed for any purpose; I am very curious and therefore a passionate observer of all what happens around me.



My firm conviction is that the primal scope of a tied-to-industry project is of course the commercial success, but there are several ways to reach this goal: I personally choose to try and interpret the customers' taste according to my "design ethics" steady principles, refusing to bend to aesthetic dogmas I don't share.

Marc Sadler was born in Austria. He is a French citizen and at present lives in Milan. He graduated from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs (Paris) in 1968, at the end of the first "industrial design" course (it had the well-chosen definition of "esthétique industrielle"), a branch of learning that was already regarded as a separated branch of learning as to architecture.

Devoted from the start to the experimentation with plastic materials (subject of his degree thesis and of his personal curiosity) since the ‘70ies he brought to perfection the very first ski-boot in thermoplastic material, subsequently industrialized by the Italian firm Caber.

The way was opened towards a long and fruitful collaboration with Caber (afterwards known as Lotto), that led him to the patenting of the ski-boot with symmetric shell, the most successful ski-boot for several years all over the world. This represented the origin of his specialization as a "designer for sport sector", that led him to the cooperation with the most important multinational sport Companies in the United States, Asia, Japan and Europe.

His professional path allowed him to mature a varied experience regarding both materials and manufacturing processes. The "source" from sports field, where research and experimentation on new materials and working technologies are more widely diffused, allowed him to export ideas and knowledge towards fields in which "design" (with a classical meaning) is deep-rooted for a long time.



Stateless in a broad sense (he lived and practiced his job in France, United States, Asia and Italy), toady he is (probably) temporarily settled in Milan. He constantly cooperates with very important firms in the fields of home furnishing, big and small household appliances, lighting, and of more technically advanced products as well, in addition to his collaborations in the field of sport.

Some of the awards he received through the years:

"Design Plus" (Frankfurt) - 1995 - for box Apotheos by Albatros;
"Compasso d'Oro" ADI (Milano) - 1995 - for Drop lamp by Flos;
"Auszeichnung für Gutes Design" (Hannover) - 1996 - for Drop2 lamp by Flos;
"Créateur de l'Année" (Paris) - 1997;

"Compasso d'Oro" ADI (Milano) - 2001 for Tite and Mite lamps by Foscarini;
"Design Plus" (Frankfurt) - 2001 - for Grammy kitchen balance by F.lli Guzzini;
"Auszeichnung für Gutes Design" (Hannover) - 2007 -for Twiggy lamp by Foscarini;
"Compasso d'Oro" ADI (Milano) - 2008 -for Big bookcase by Caimi Brevetti;
"Segnalazione Compasso d’Oro" ADI (Milano) - 2008 - for Twiggy lamp by Foscarini.

His Motorcyclist's Back Protector (designed for Dainese) is housed in the permanent collection of design at MOMA in New York and the lamp Mite (Foscarini) is part of the design collection of the Beaubourg in Paris.

In spite of his well deserved reputation as a technical designer, Marc Sadler is a very talented artist in drawing, painting and sculpture, sensitive and so much emotionally engaged as to consider painting as his most true passion, source of creative torments, and thus practised at an intimate level.

CLIENTS: Alu, Caimi Brevetti, Dainese, Flou, Foscarini, Gruppo Euromobil, Karol, Kerasan, Lema, Martinelli luce, Robots, Serralunga, Skitsch.





Marc Sadler
designer


Contacts:

Studio

via Savona, 97
20144 Milano - MI - Italy
Tel. +39 02 42297678
Fax +39 02 47716139

www.marcsadler.it
studio@marcsadler.it